


the seraph with his six flamingo wings

by elijah_was_a_prophet



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Firefighters, Gen, ILB Season 7, Noodle Incidents, POV Second Person, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27812581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/pseuds/elijah_was_a_prophet
Summary: You had set out from Montreal to cover a blaseball game, and now you're staring down an umpire's emissary with only a toothpaste grenade to save you.Or; Teal Poumouns catches up with an old friend.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	the seraph with his six flamingo wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowersforgraves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/gifts).



You are surprised to find out upon your arrival in the U.S. that the American correspondent and unofficial editor the folks at _Le Journal de Montreal des Gens_ have found for you is someone you know. More than surprised, since for several years you’d assumed that Praise Be To He Who Stretched The Spangled Banner (PB for short) and his family had gotten trapped between the closed border and the floods. To see him standing there in full feathered glory almost makes you drop your suitcase.

“You’re alive!” you yelp. It’s not the reunion you’d imagined, standing at the Detroit pier while a ferry of Toronto-bound Instagram influencers board behind you. “I never heard word after the flood.”

“I meant to call,” he says. “But the phone lines were down. When I saw your name in des Gens I called them and asked to speak to you-this was after they started publishing the online version, I had no clue beforehand- and they said we could meet in person if I took this job. So I said yes. Now we can catch up, even though it’s been a while? You know?”

“Your aunt is still in Canada and she never said anything.”

“We couldn’t reach her because of the border. Everything is so slow around there, you know?”

You nod. One of the main reasons you haven’t been out to the Poumons family Thanksgiving in a few years is because the Downpour 3 proof ferries are so much slower than the regular ones. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the large time paradox that’s taken up a large section of The Part Of The Ocean Formerly Known As Rouyn-Noranda, meaning that sometimes you call to arrange a visit only to have your grand-niblings pick up and assure you that they’ve already given the family condolences. It’s much harder to visit your family when they’re currently experiencing a timeline in which you died a resistance fighter on the front lines with the Independence Referendum Liberation Front.

“I just need help with geography. And the whole Imperial measurement system. How fast is 100 miles per hour, really? And how long is a foot?”

“One’s the median speed of a blaseball, assuming the pitcher has a finger number within 2.2 of the factory standard 10, and the other is about a foot long.”

The feet you were naturally born with are probably longer than the average foot, but there’s no time to worry about measurements when the _Southern Slingshot_ rolls into the station and you must run to make it before the rubber band disengages and sends the _Slingshot_ hurtling back down south. PB leans on your shoulder; you accept it despite having not touched in over a decade.

Your inability to understand Imperial comes in handy when the train gets slung back down, traveling 520 mph. The inability to assess how much terror you should be feeling prevents you from hurling and shrieking the way your fellow passengers do. Feeling perfectly Zen, you pull a copy of Ortiz Morse’s _Statistical Efficiency, 2 nd Edition _out of your bag. While not your favorite player on the Wet Talkers, as one of the only blaseball players from Quebec Morse holds a special place in the heart of every single des Gens employee.

“Second edition?” PB asks. “What could he possibly add to a 2,000 page book?”

“Footnotes.”

“Oh brother.”

Down to the American South you go, merrily flipping through your book and taking note of how many times Morse uses phrases like ‘to put it in non-statistical terms’ or ‘if one desires a layman’s explanation’. While brilliant the theory involved is dense, especially by Chapter 51, where he begins to use Bayesian programming to try and explain how pitching works in light of the Wyatt Masoning as well as certain advancements in Cinnamon analytics. While technically forbidden knowledge, Morse has cleverly hidden his SIBR sources by putting ‘hypothetical’ in front of every described stat.

This does have the side effect of making chapters longer than they have to be, and so you’ve only progressed up to chapter 54 (In the Hypothetical Case of A Hypothetical Stat Hypothetically Called Buoyancy) by the time the train comes to a sproingy stop.

“I’ve got a contact waiting for us here,” PB says. “Atlanta traffic is impossible.”

“What’s their name?”

“Peachy Velour. We go back.”

On the station platform you spot a rosy-faced lovebird and guess it’s Peachy; PB proves you right by wildly waving at her and chirping. The angel and lovebird dialects must not be too dissimilar, as they have an extended conversation before PB introduces you properly.

“Teal Poumons.”

“Peachy Velour, or PV as they know me downtown.”

PB rolls his eyes, you think. It’s hard to tell when he’s got so many.

The city of Atlanta is excitingly setup like a series of uniform honeycombs in hyperbolic space, made even more difficult to navigate by the fact that almost every single road is named ‘Peachtree Street’, including multiple overlapping roads where taking a left, taking a right, going straight, or performing an illegal W-turn are all ‘at Peachtree Street’.

“Where is the arena?” you ask after making a turn onto what may or may not be the correct Peachtree.

“On Peachtree Street,” Peachy replies.

“Which one?”

“I told you which one. Peachtree Street.”

“Don’t bother,” PB flaps. “Everyone in this city insists that they know the right Peachtree Street and only out of towners get confused.”

You walk past a Luthodist church you know you’ve seen before and up a hill underneath and above large oaks. The city is charmingly green, and the local squirrel populations have set up a variety of street vending locations, as well as a courier service. Up in Montreal the closest they have is a bunch of negative crows who sometimes eat messages instead of delivering them.

“You know,” Peachy signs after making a loop around the CNN building, “I think I may not know which Peachtree Street the arena is on.”

“That was the entire point of asking you to come along!”

Pacing back and forth, you watch bikers and skateboarders stand in traffic, many eating squirrel provided street foods or checking their phones for the latest Bleet. Even with the AI-designed new city street plan traffic jams still mysteriously spring up, leaving commuters bored as they wait for the light to turn green. As it turns out, over 90% of the population still doesn’t have a GPS installed in their brains and therefore cannot calculate the optimized route.

“Maybe we should just guess,” you say. “Listen for the sound and spirit of blaseball.”

“Or ask that person for their map.”

Peachy points towards a rollerblader who has taken a break from standing in the road to stand on the sidewalk, large unfolded map in hand. You sneak close, hoping to peek over their shoulder and see the arena instead of having to confront them and ask to directly see it, but Peachy ruins your chances by flapping over and chirping at them.

They whistle back, and after a short conversation Peachy flutters overhead and does a loop indicating you should follow her. She leads the way down one Peachtree and up Left Peachtree and then to Main Street, all the way to a large restaurant with red and green signs. THE VARSITY.

“That’s not the Arena,” you point out, and then, “I thought Basethirst was the official Blaseball sponsor.”

“The Arena isn’t on any map. After the lawsuit the Coke Bottles hid their location, leaving it accessible only to true believers and those with a deity’s boon.”

You’ve got a couple saints medals and a tattoo of Blazibaal but those probably don’t count, as they were gathered through the direction of the self and not the intervention of another. So you push inside THE VARSITY and find it relatively busy for such an odd point in the day, with a modest line of people all collecting wax cups of onion rings. A Coke machine squats ominously in the corner. The stairs into the second dining space are blocked off by a Wet Floor sign but Peachy flies over them and you follow.

“Are you sure we’re supposed to be doing this?” PB waves. You look towards the cashiers, who are all staring straight at the Coke dispenser with a cup of onion rings half full in their hands. Nobody’s said anything.

The spot that Peachy wanted to show you is in the corner of the dining room, next to a jukebox and a mop. One tiny Yankee Candle sits in front of a figurine of Our Lady of Perpetual Friday, seen in her Benevolent Tidings pose with two hands outspread. Someone has been here recently, as the flowers hanging around her are fresh and the candle is not melted to the bottom of the jar. You press your fingertips together and nod towards her, then open your bag to find an offering. Not much that’s specific to the Lady, but as someone who appreciates a good time you think she’ll enjoy your pack of Greenbow gum and a few toonies.

“Is that enough?” PB asks. “Or should we buy onion rings?”

“I think she’ll be satisfied. Some people can get away with just singing a song, but I’m not sure if you two know all the words to ‘Tubthumping’.”

Sadly your knowledge of anarcho-communist British punk bands is lacking and you do not. With some trepidation you make your way down the steps of THE VARSITY and take a left, since that feels right. Warm breezes blow through your hair and you look up to see the perfect yellow disc of the sun which warms everything it touches instead of the angered ball that it is in times of immolation.

The Arena appears, and fans in red with it, between blinks. You’re taken aback for a minute before remembering that this was your destination all along. With the press pass you and one visitor are given a premium seat; there’s some concern about PB’s height which distracts from where Peachy is hiding in your bag. The squirrels accept jokes as currency, if they’re good ones, and after telling the one about the archduke and the nationalist movement you’re comfortably sitting only a few meters from the bench with a cherry Coke and two bags of peanuts.

“TWO MINUTES TO FIRST THROW,” the arena announcer booms. You watch the opposing team come out, dressed in crisp yellow and green uniforms. It provokes immediate rustlings in the crowd. The fans in the stands of the Jerry Reed Memorial Arena and Waffle House all raise their hands and slowly intone “SEVEN UP HAS NO CAFFEINE.” The Burlington Lemon-Lime Sodas refuse to react.

“Not very encouraging, is it?” you ask PB.

“They just called them decaffeinated! Aren’t those still fighting words up in Quebec?”

“Never heard of the insult, personally.” You turn your attention back to the field, where the players are in starting positions. Of note is the pitcher, who appears to be well above average in the fingers department, and the third baseman, who is already on fire and scorching the grass underneath them. A quick consult of the massive player guide you keep in your bag reveals their identities- Achab Tafani, #32 for the Lemon-Lime Sodas, and Malignant Divine, #4 for the Coke Bottles.

 _Malignant Divine_ … the name sounds familiar. But you can’t place it right now, not when blaseball is happening. Current weather is clear and sunny, with none of the peanuts or birds or blood that so frequently wreak havoc on what should be a game of mettle and skill. The Coke Bottles batter strikes out and there’s a short debate on the field, as while logic dictates that Lana Anna Redman-Threepeat counts as one person since they have a single jersey number one of the Lemon-Lime staff is arguing that two heads count as separate people.

The umpire blows a threatening tongue of fire and the coach steps down, letting Redman-Threepeat take the plate. You crunch down on your cold peanuts and take a sip of Coke. Some of what Morse wrote in his book about pitching and the curveball echoes in the back of your mind but you’re too caught up in watching the drama of blaseball to do any serious statistical analysis. Periodically the crowd stands and chants “SEVEN UP HAS NO CAFFEINE.” You join in after the third round, caught up in the excitement of being and doing something.

“It’s crossing the sky!” Peachy shrieks while you’re buying a second bag of peanuts, this time warm.

You turn and see an eclipse begin. Well.

“There’s only two innings left,” you tell her. “Maybe nobody will get incinerated?”

Still, the growling of rogue umpires sets you on edge as you watch the Lemon-Lime sodas tie it up in the eight and the crowd groans. Having gone quiet, there’s nothing to disturb the peace as it lurches into the ninth and a possible extended game. You’re nervous but stay politely restrained, since Peachy is hiding in your backpack and PB is a feathery ball of alarm.

Malignant Divine burns very bright in the semi-darkness. Somehow the light brings more fear.

The Coke Bottles win 4-3 after an absolute steal in the ninth inning, when Preecha Suparat hits a home run and takes off around the bases, using her additional sets of equestrian legs for a speed boost and stretching one out to just barely tap the plate before she can be tagged out by one of the Lemon-Lime Sodas. The crowd hurls handfuls of peanut shells and soda can tabs onto the field to show their excitement. A weak thrower behind you showers your head in wet sand from one of the seafood delight deals and you spend the walk from the arena to the hostel trying to rub it out of your hair.

“Well that was fun,” Peachy waves. “Worth the 50 dollars. And nobody died!”

“You got paid and you didn’t even show us where the arena was?”

Privately you agree with PB, but it’s getting late and the amount of energy you have left for dealing with people is flagging. The hostel has a few private rooms, one of which the paper called ahead and reserved for you, and you fall asleep without changing into pajamas or checking your email. That’s something that morning you can handle.

Morning arrives too bright and too early, and you weigh the ethics of pretending to miss the train out of Atlanta to afford a few more minutes of sleep before remembering that today you’ve got to go up to Chattanooga for the double header tomorrow. The slingshot train runs only five days a week and tomorrow’s a Saturday; the paper wasn’t clear about your schedule after that but if you don’t get an article on the Moonpies in by Sunday night your job will be compromised.

You poke PB awake and then prod him into packing. He seems more reluctant than you are, or maybe he has something against Chattanooga. It’s hard to tell at seven in the morning. And if you knew once how to read him, well. You no longer know now.

“I miss Montreal,” he says once you’ve settled on the train. “Tell me what happened after the water.”

I missed you, you want to say. I missed my best friend. Instead you gesture widely, spreading your fingers to try and indicate just how much land it covered when it came rolling in, pouring out of Thunder Bay, over the territories, the St Lawrence overflowing its banks, a wall coming over BC and barely skirting the Rockies to turn the waves of grass into waves of water. The small boat your family sat and prayed in. How when it came overhead you swore you saw a massive leviathan, right before it crushed half of the neighborhood.

“How’d you know to get out in time?”

“Divine intervention, or something like it. HS has xyr visions and I had a tightness in the dorsobronchi. Always a bad omen.”

“We didn’t have any warning.”

It’s true but it’s not a kind thing to say, as by all accounts no matter when the warning was issued 2/3rds of Canada still would have been swallowed. Things were different after the flood, with more forgiveness to go around, but you grew hard instead.

“Who would have believed even an angel that the flood would happen?”

“Someone would have. Strange things happen, sometimes.”

The train passes over the state line and you blink. Speeds are insane here compared to the slowness of ferries up in Canada. PB sees you flinch and doesn’t comment.

“Does it upset you to see me again?”

“Fuck no! It’s just weird.”

It’s just weird is an apt descriptor of many things in life and in blaseball. You disembark at the Chattanooga station and haul yourself and your handy backpack to another motel, unsure of what to spend the rest of the day on.

“We could do something on the river,” PB suggests. “They have the Olympic rowing facilities. Ever rowed a boat?”

“That’s how I got to school.”

The only other activity you’ve thought to do is throw your socks at the ceiling fan and mentally award points based on where they get smacked to, so you follow PB down to the riverside and rent a little boat. The Tennessee River is currently in its Phase 3 Tide, meaning that some of the downtown canals are navigable.

“Do we need a coxswain?”

“A coxswain! That’s only if you’ve got four, eight, twenty rowers. Follow my rhythm and there won’t be any trouble.”

You spoke too soon. It’s difficult for PB to navigate his grip on the oars with so many wings and limbs; he keeps scooping too quickly and getting caught in your backstroke. You think that the couple merrily paddling by under Hangmans Bridge is laughing at your attempts to get past the end of the dock.

“I think we need a coxswain.”

“Would it help if I yelled?”

“Sure.”

So you go, yelling BACK-SCOOP-FRONT-OVER until it mushes into one word, yelling stop when it’s time for a turn so PB uses the right oar, figuring out how to slow down when it seems like the little rowboat will be run aground on a bottle littered strip of beach. It’s very stressful, but you think you’re having fun anyways. PB is warm against your back and the weather is nice. None of the rain you’d been warned of during this part of the year in the southern places.

“Which canal?”

“Whichever one goes by the arena. I want to look for something.”

Rumor has it that Philadelphia put a piece of herself into the base of the Moonpies stadium, and although your vision is cloudy you can sometimes see the edges of powerful things, like the glow around the edge of the moon when it crosses the sun and invites incineration down on the earth. A single piece of Philadelphia would be very powerful indeed, and might go a long way towards explaining how the Moonpies have made it to the top of the Southeastern Agricultural Products Division of the Underleagues.

The Chattanooga Bakery swings into view and you search its concrete foundations, looking for a tiny crack into its heart. In the back parking lot some of the team is playing pickup volleyball, using a line of trashcans and abandoned peanut crates as a dividing net. You maneuver the boat into a still spot between two concrete retaining walls and watch one of the pony players execute a perfect spike serve.

“Hey you down there!” one of the players shouts. “Know how to be a libero?”

Attention! Having inadvertently caused a scene, you seek to flee. PB ignores your frantic gestures and unfolds a wing to expose a mouth.

“Sure! Played vlolleyball through college.”

You didn’t know he went to college. You went to an outdoor school in southern Ontario, where your main lessons involved the many uses of the cattail and how to make a fishing rod using cedar bark. Somehow it landed you a job in journalism, which should serve as a lesson on how trustworthy the media is. Is PB employed? Did he get an MFA and find his career opportunities lacking?

None of this is solving the issue of you being unable to play volleyball to save your life. The team takes pity on you after a single serve attempt and assigns you to cheerleading duty, a job you take to with extreme gusto but lack of much else.

“HIT THE BALL!” you scream. It has a demoralizing effect. The pony playing whichever position stands on the left and fumbles, making the ball veer wildly to the side and hit a window. Everyone collectively winces.

“Try cheerleading a bit quieter,” PB suggests. He’s been successful, for what it’s worth, and you’re somewhat jealous that between the two of you the only one who can play a sport isn’t the sports journalist. He who can’t do talks a lot of shit about it, you guess.

Between serves you try and peek into the depths of the Bakery to look for the piece of Philadelphia. Was it her heart? Her liver? Such questions distract you from the game at hand, and it’s your own fault when a ball goes off to the side and hits you in the face hard enough to make you fall over.

“Whoops,” says the entity who spiked it.

“It’s only wounded my pride.”

“And your nose. Someone have a tissue?”

PB carries you off and onto the boat, with the captain of the Moonpies shouting apologies and promising compensation goodies. You nod, slightly confused about what’s happening.

“You need me to row?” he asks.

“I got it,” you mumble. The swelling is fattening all of your consonants. But up in Canada it’s sail or die, and no petty injury will stop you from making it back to the motel, if only to put an ice pack on your face and complain about occupational hazards to your coworkers.

“Sorry about your face.”

“S’fine. Used to play water blastardball.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Even seen _Texas Chainsaw Massacre?_ That, but in a pool. And with rackets.”

“None of those little hammers?”

“I played volleyer.”

“You’ll have to explain it to me sometime. It seems fascinating.”

You nod in agreement. While blaseball is fun, blastardball has a certain nobility of splort that you’ve never seen replicated in any other field. And when so divinely combined with aquatics, well. Not even the Olympic Glames could compete with the joy of seeing your enemies drowned before you and to hear the lamentations of their pep squad. At wilderness school you were selected for the prestigious ‘Best Usage of Elbowing’ category three times in a row, culminating in your appointment as the #1 Lucky Blastard your senior year.

“You played vlolleyball in college?” you ask PB. “Where?”

“With the Standford Cardinal.”

You know from Wikipedia adventures that vlolleyball Division I was hardcore, especially when several of the other teams had squeaked through an obscure rule that didn’t count clones against total player count.

“And what did you study?” you continue with.

“Got a B.A. in musical education. Choir teacher has always been my dream job.”

“I remember that!”

The memory delights you. Before the flood you two would sit underneath the open window of the music classroom after school and listen to the student chorale group practice; PB confessed his dreams while the pubescent tenors struggled with the low and the high notes in ‘Jingle Ball Muzak’. Being able to recall something about your once friend is a treasure, and you bite into it with an open mouth.

“I don’t remember you wanting to be a journalist,” he says. The dock is near so you shrug. Journalism was something that kinda happened, as did your thirty day marriage and a couple of house fires.

It’s still bright out so plenty of people take notice of your messed up nose, which you have poked and confirmed is not broken but still throbs like a bad headache. You’re hungry, too, and you wonder if it’d make sense to stop somewhere and get something to eat or if the blood should be cleaned off first. PB says that flaking fluids put other people off their food, so you ride out the hottest part of the day inside with a cold washcloth on your face while watching TV. _My Roomie Ruslan_ is in production again. You laugh at all the jokes about Morrow growing increasingly frustrated at the presence of cameras while Ruslan is in a different state.

“ _I don’t want to live like this anymore!_ ” they yell in the season 10 opener. “ _Please! I just want to be normal!_ ”

The Spies will see the show cancelled soon enough, but you like to keep current with popular media and the only other thing on TV at this time of day is cooking shows, which are useless to you as you don’t cook. The microwave and frozen boxes of pierogis are your constant companions.

“I want to watch _Cursed Cuisine with Mauve_ ,” PB flutters at you.

“And be hungry?”

“There’s food in my bag. Mauve isn’t a very good cook, either, so you might not want to eat after watching her.”

You weigh your options. Continue watching a dubiously filmed sitcom, or fall asleep to a cooking show?

“Fine, have the remote.”

Snuggled under the covers, you close your eyes for a nap when something feathery pushes into bed beside you. PB’s many wings fold in an unnatural but compact manner, so it isn’t like you’re being shoved out of the bed, but you got used to sleeping alone at wilderness school. Other people meant danger, to your life and to your GPA. Casual touch is also less common now that your body has gone through its post-graduation transformation. The sharp bits scare people, and the furry bits unnerve them.

PB seems to have no such qualms, which is in line with his angelic nature. Forehooves and horns are nothing compared to a mass of wings covered in eyes and tongues. You let him curl two wings above you, blanketing out the afternoon light. There’s the faint murmur of the TV, but the sound of the street and people walking in their room overhead are muffled. It’s relaxing in your new cocoon.

When you sleep you dream, and your dreams are visions. This time your mind shows you the next day’s doubleheader, the Moonpies versus the Raleigh Durums. Soft processed wheat versus tough toothy ones. Mano a mano, carb on carb. You’re up in one of the bakery boxes, splitting a cinnamon pretzel with PB, when the moon moves in front of the sun and leaves the arena in a sickly half-light. Incineration risk is spiking.

Frustratingly the dreams stops there to instead show a memory from your school band. While watching your past efforts on the piccolo you try and guess who might fall victim to the wrath of the sun during the double-header. There’s been no proven pattern to incinerations, only grief and the faint scent of charcoal, and you hope there’s not a loss from pure dumb fiery batter luck.

At least when you awake you’re refreshed, still underneath PB’s wing.

“Still watching Mauve?”

“She’s making deviled eggs using whipped cream and French onions.”

You retch. “What’s the point of the show? Do people actually eat that shit?”

“It’s actually deeper than a cooking show. Based on the items she’s used in her dishes, how she’s stressed various words, and the large poster of Mirsaid Sultan Galiev, the codebreakers at the Cursed Cuisine forum have deduced that today’s episode is actually about dependency theory.”

“What?”

PB flips his laptop screen towards you, showing a massive discussion thread. You see red-circled screencaps, transcripts of dialogue with quoted theory underneath, hyperlinks to a site called cursedcookbooks.org. None of it makes any sense.

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s secretly brilliant! Her show is streamable in over 90 countries, and the forum is disguised as a normal site that can slip past local firewalls. People find it, start reading the downloadable literature, and by the end of the week they’re aware of the cause.”

“And the gelatin?”

“She just likes gelatin, I think. The Fleshy Beef Substitute is required by her Jamazon sponsorship, which is pretty ironic considering the no-meat meaty chili episode was about worker’s rights to unionize.”

Despite the types of players blaseball tends to attract you’ve never been that up to date with what one might call the heart of the struggle. During your college days you’d spent several volunteering stints with the Independent Ojibwe Fleet, and during the Rouyn-Noranda Reclamation Meetings you’d served as a translator, but outside of those local movements your awareness was lacking. There’d just been so much work to do in your community.

“I might ask you about that then, sometime. Just to catch up.”

PB smiles and pats you on the head with a wing. “Sounds good. Now I’m hungry- you missed that episode, but Mauve made this fruit salad that actually looked really good.”

“Seems doubtful.”

The two of you end up splitting a fruit salad, at a restaurant called The Fruit Hat, where all the employees do in fact wear them along with fruit-themed outfits and living fruit plants for decoration.

“This is just a side hustle,” a server in a banana smock and a two foot banana crown says. “We do interpretive theater on the weekends, but strobe lights and face paint don’t buy themselves.”

There’s something endlessly charming about Chattanooga in the evening, more relaxed than Atlanta was and with less traffic. People paddle home with the last hours of Phase 3 Tide, while others sit on their back porches and watch fireflies. From the open window of your motel room you can hear an impromptu concert start up at an apartment complex, residents sitting on their balconies and attempting to find a song they all know. Eventually someone settles with ‘Surrey With the Fringe On Top’ and you’re treated to a wonderful 30-minute musical experience.

“Where are you going after Chattanooga?”

You shrug from where you’re laying on the floor. “I’ve got another week on my visa after this, but I think they’re expecting me back at the paper the day after tomorrow. The instructions were vague, since it’s the hlockey UFA deadline and des Gens isn’t des Gens unless it’s breathing down the players necks.”

“So you could stay.”

“You’ve got an idea?”

“Course I do. When I offered to be your guide, I asked around, and the Jazz Hands give free seats to journalists. Has anyone at the paper ever covered a game from the Pocket?”

“Nobody’s ever covered a game live except for the Moist Talkers, and the sports writers in Halifax hate the Jazz Hands too much to cross the border and watch them live.”

“So you could be the first!”

While dropping a sudden change of plans on your boss seems ill-advised, they did once let a writer who’d left to cover the ice skating finals in Lithuania stay and chronicle a burgeoning women’s hlockey league and the world juniors women’s cup in Slovakia. A precedent exists, you’ll just have to tactfully word your proposal. _Dear Mx. Nurse, I have a proposal for you regarding my remaining visa time and an exclusive travel opportunity involving our home country’s biggest rival and a large amount of snow…_

“I’ll see what I can do. You have a plan for getting us there?”

“Teal, I live in Colorado now. Getting home’s easier than taking mortal transport for me.”

The angelic mode of transport concerns and thrills you at the same time. It would make a nice opener to your article, at least. Speaking of which! You power up your word processor and begin work on the Chattanooga Moonpies article. As set out by the paper style guidelines it begins with an atmospheric description, notes about the surroundings and the river that runs high and the people you saw while bleeding from the face. (That last part is not added.) You talk for a bit about local cuisine, how the Moonpies season has been going, and the smell of the air before leaving a big [GAME DESCRIPTION HERE] for when you actually get to see the thing.

While you write PB goes to look for takeout soup, since the facial swelling hasn’t gone town and you don’t want to expose the kind people at the Red Lobster to your ugly mug. Everything goes a little dim after that, although you do remember the tomato basil soup in a long slide of hours that ends with the next morning’s sunrise and a cup of hot coffee.

“You were out of it for a while there,” PB says while he smooths out his feathers.

“Healing response. Leaves me a little loopy, but my nose is already set.” You poke it side to side to prove the point. He continues with his feathers, which range from a brilliant white at the innermost layer of his body to an outer two-tone of pale dusty blue and carnelian. Some of his secondary eyes blink between a celadon alula and peachy coverts. It’s never occurred to you to ask if he can see out of them; the question seems both silly and like forbidden knowledge.

“Do the Moonpies have a fight song?”

“They have ‘Gimmie an RC Cola and a Moonpie!’ but that’s more of a successful runs chant. Kinda boring.”

“You’ll love the Jazz Hands, then. They have live music every game, for the entire game.”

A thought occurs to you, a worrying one. “PB, are you a Jazz Hands fan? Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“But- the Jazz Hands are our great Canadian rivals, PB. We can’t just decide to like our rival team while they’re playing. That goes against the CBA!”

He laughs and flutters at you. “It’s no problem for the Pan-Rockies Pep Club. They’ve got an entire line of Albertan fiddlers.”

Your worldview is shaken. Here’s your rediscovered friend, a person who was once of good taste and sound mind, arguing for the Jazz Hands. What a shame this world can be, sometimes.

“We have an official joking rivalry now,” you tell him. “Get ready.”

By the time you reach the stadium the rivalry has involved nothing except for an attempted trip and making him pay for your second coffee by pretending to have forgotten your wallet, but it’s just warming up. While standing in line to buy a ticket one of the Bakery staff comes over and asks if you’re the ball face person. Saying yes nets you a press pass.

“You’ll probably have to wait outside,” you tell PB. “I think the locker room ceiling will be too short anyways.”

“Aww. I’ve never seen a locker room! While I played vlolleyball I just waited on the court.”

“Aren’t the facilities supposed to be accessible?”

“There’s nothing I need to change in or out of. I got a pinnie so the commentators could tell my number.”

It’s like when you were looking for a snack in the pantry after watching _And Then She Lay In The Snow_ and then it suddenly occurred to you that Lara couldn’t have lived at the end of the movie because she left her shoes in the cubby and you’d cried into the leftover tuna casserole. Except not sad. More shocked and also kicking yourself because you somehow never noticed that angels don’t wear clothes.

“I’m an idiot,” you tell PB. “Watch that I don’t fall down the stairs because I tried to pick the wrong foot up.”

“Nobody’s an idiot. Just that we all have different abilities and skillsets.”

Hopping down the Bakery steps you’re inclined to disagree, although there’s no point in arguing when there’s blaseball to watch. As the feeder team for an ILB one there’s loads of talent, from pitchers Abeba Kebede and Marta Gottschalk to batter Valeriana Gorecki. You’re just settled in with your popcorn and drink when you remember the dream from the day prior, a solar eclipse that threatened fire.

“Do you know if there’s a way to stop incineration?” you whisper to PB. “Some angelic trick?”

“Even the angels cannot shift the sun.”

“Shit. I have- I have a hunch that we’ll have an eclipse today, and I’m worried for the players.”

“Worry about the Raleigh Durums and their poor batting history first.”

Still, you keep your head inclined towards the sun in anticipation. The weight of that dream hangs over you like the bodies do above the earth. Opening positions are typical for each team, and you use a golf pencil to record what happens during them. Kebede throws three perfect pitches to strike out the first batter. The sun is hotter than usual.

“Give me an RC Cola and a Moonpie!” you unenthusiastically shout. Waiting for the worst is going to make a doubleheader a slog when you usually enjoy the extended look at a team’s talents, and probably give you a tension headache. Kebede takes out another batter.

“Give me an RC Cola and a Moonpie!” PB shouts for you. It’s loud next to you ear but he’s got the right spirit. And the crowd is getting into the swing of the game, chatting with one another and cheering every time their crackshot pitchers take down another batter.

Drawing another line in your scorecard, you check the roster for the game on a sudden suspicion. Jocasta Van As, Chi Nguyen, Malignant Divine, Tisiphone Valley Bear-

Wait.

 _Malignant Divine_. The name itches something in the back of your head. A memory that you should have but which doesn’t click all the way through. A stalled connection. You focus so hard on the name that you don’t notice the swing of the moon as its orbit comes between the sun and the earth.

“Solar eclipse.” PB shivers. “You were right.”

Times like this you hate being a prophet. The players see the eclipse overhead and shrink in on themselves; you see people folding their arms into their bodies as if being a smaller target will protect them from incineration. Still thinking, you search the field for Malignant Divine only to see them alight on the bench. There’s a riddle there, about becoming one with the sun to defy it, and it terrifies you as much as the first wall of water did.

“I think there’s something wrong with #4,” you whisper to PB. “They give me a bad feeling.”

PB turns several of his glossier eyes towards Divine. “I have angels like that in my family. They’re nice enough, if a bit hazardous to the furniture.”

“The player guide lists them as mostly human.”

“You sure?”

Play has resumed, albeit slower than it was before. You feel feathery wings over your shoulders as PB tips you in close, eyes still split between Divine and the sky. There’s nothing anyone can do in the face of a warm and uncaring universe. Very delicately you crunch a popped corn between your teeth.

By the sixth inning everyone has relaxed enough to begin chattering and chanting again, the sun beginning its first peeks from behind the moon. You’re still on edge, though, as the sunbeams beginning to spill carry the promise of danger. Any one of them could become a massive consuming fireball that threatens all of existence with its breadth.

“Stay right here,” PB murmurs low to your ear. “I’m going to try and get a better look at that one player.”

You watch him drift down to the railing separating tiers of the Bakery from the ones below, ambling as if he’s just a slow walker on his way to the restrooms or the refreshments stand. With his wings tucked close to his body he can peer between them without anyone noticing, and due to the bizarre half-light the eclipse gives the halo that envelops his body is concealed. Good, since on angels it glows a bit more when they use any of their gifts to try and discern something.

There’s a dark shape on the field in the grass, ignored while Van As rounds the bases. The sky grows lighter and you grip the edge of your seat, squeezing so hard that the blood rushes out, leg shaking. It rises from the grass, aflame with its mouth open.

“Umpire!” you hear the players scream. “Jos, run!”

She’s not fast enough.

After an incineration there’s always a quick pause to clean the ashes up and try and find the feral umpire, as a precaution to those who might use the field later, and PB takes the opportunity to return with a box of Milk Dubs.

“You were right,” he says.

“And I don’t like it. Milk Dubs are terrible, why’d you buy them?”

“Looks less suspicious.” He settles back in his seat next to you and offers some anyways. “You’re right about Divine, too. Something’s off there and I don’t like it. They whistled, right before that umpire came up. Low and long, like trains when they roll through.”

“Could the two be connected?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Umpires aren’t from God, so they aren’t my thing. I’d figure a blaseball reporter would know something.”

“Umpires aren’t supposed to be there, and they only come out under the cover of darkness. So we don’t know much either. Maybe they are summoning them.”

You look back down towards Malignant Divine, still aflame on the bench. Honestly, the fire without burning should have been a clue that something was up, although you try to reserve your snap judgments nowadays because of your own looks. PB is looking as well, but he must not see anything of note since he closes all his eyes and sighs deeply.

“I’m taking a nap.”

“We have another four hours. At least.”

“Wake me up if they set someone else on fire, then.”

Nobody else is set alight, although the Moonpie crowd is noticeably somber as black armbands are passed out in mourning. Some of the players shout that they’re doing it for Jos, but it doesn’t prevent a 9-7 and then 8-1 loss. You’re devastated, and you don’t even follow the team. Not even a nickel sangria ladle can raise people’s spirits.

“Rough day,” you say between cups. “Fuckin- how am I supposed to write an article about that? Pitching was good, batters excellent, oh and someone died?”

“Maybe lead with the whole death thing,” PB suggests. “It makes a compelling narrative hook.”

“I’ll compel you,” you softly complain. It really is difficult and depressing, having to write about a game without glossing over or editorializing about incineration. In Halifax one of the sports writers thinks he’s come up with a wonderful new theory about how to prevent umpire attacks using artificial lights, but if things were that easy someone would have already implemented them.

Whatever. The article isn’t due until Sunday night and you’ll figure it out then, along with your plea for more time in the US to work on another article. Maybe you are a little excited about being the first Canadian writer to cover the Jazz Hands (independent Rocky Mountain States don’t count) but you’re also tediously drunk and need someone to carry you back to the motel.

“Alright?” PB says when he lifts you. There’s nothing to be scared of since his wings are so solid, and you find yourself relaxing as the cityscape passes by in lovely blurry color. When your head moves too fast you get tilt-a-whirl dizzy and it makes you wonder if you’ll remember most of this in the morning.

Naturally, you remember it all, down to drunkenly tackling PB and asking if he’d ever leave again before falling asleep on his bed. You’d thought you’d sobered up once you’d made it to the motel but were proven wrong and landed on your already-sore nose for a second time.

“That sangria was a bit strong,” you comment while flattening your hair to your head and having a morning Tylenol. “Sorry about kicking you in my sleep.”

“It’s fine. HS has probably done worse, back when we shared a room.”

You poke at your face and assess the second round of swelling. Not bad enough to turn heads, at least. PB hasn’t clarified how the angelic transport will work but oozing fluids everywhere seems impolite.

“What time does the train leave?”

“Train? Oh, I’m flying us there. Since it’s my home I don’t need navigation, and flying is faster than going by land once you get high up enough.”

“PB.”

“Yes?”

“When you say high-“

“About a mile.”

Relying on your ignorance of the Imperial measurement system, you pack and help PB fasten the luggage to himself. By last count he has around 216 wings ranging from around hand sized to as large as a beach umbrella, so there are many convenient tying points, and if you reach up into his feathery mass you can be cradled in his wings like the saddlebags of a donkey. Your brain is screaming very hard at how dangerous this all seems and you are pointedly ignoring it.

“How long are we gonna be in the air?”

“Uh, hard to say. Time folds when angels fly.”

Time folds. Well, that’s reassuring. You maneuver so your phone is by your face and plug your headphones in; you have a blaseball ASMR video cued and plan to spend the flight taking a nap. Divine and incineration are still playing in the back of your mind like cats with string, and you hope to dream up a vision to try and explain a few things.

“Now you can explain blastardball to me,” PB says. “If you want.”

“I was planning on napping.”

“Oh, but if you nap I might also fall asleep. And it’s not a good idea to sleep when you’re changing time zones. That’s right where the folds get the worst.”

His logic, while flawed, isn’t as faulty as any of your counter-arguments and so you resign yourself to staying awake instead of sleeping and listening to disembodied hands whisper pitcher names into your ears.

It’s said that a comprehensive explanation of blastardball would be more like a graduate program, and you think there’s a lot of truth to that sentiment. Certainly after an hour of explanation on the subject of trenches and their importance to the heavy artillery sections of the game you feel like a would-be professor. It’s way different in water blaseball, where the trenchdiggers are replaced by oarsmen and the mortars are more like trebuchets.

“So the equipment for each position goes helmet, fun gloves, hurler, mallet, pitchfork, crossbow, grenade belt, and shovel?”

“In field blastardball, yes. In water blastardball it goes nose clip, semaphore flags, racquet, mallet, stick, bâton percé, trebuchet, oars.”

“Fascinating! And what about the Ishiro-Mulligan Maneuver when done in water blastardball?”

“That simply isn’t done. The pitchforkers don’t have the blood-drawing ability for it.” You stretch within your feathery cocoon and begin to trace a play diagram on PB’s skin. “If the volleyers are here, and the defenders make a perfect pincer movement, then it makes more sense for them to clobber the other team’s offense where they float instead of waiting and letting them dive away.”

“Oh, I see.” He makes a sudden drop in altitude and you feel it in the pit of your stomach. “We’re almost there. Can you smell the mountains?”

“No. It just smells like bird in here. And cologne.”

“If we were passing over the Hellmouth you’d be smelling the sulfur. But that’s too far to the west of where we’re headed.”

You nod and check your phone. No reply to the email you sent asking for lenience and an extended leave in the US, although response times have always been lax in the office. Something about a minor time anomaly and only answering when Jupiter is in Powerade.

“My house is actually on the slope above Breckenridge, so you’ll be able to see everything from there.”

“You got a house? Wow, the financial independence.”

“Well. It’s not, like, a regular house that humans would live in, you know? Fewer walls and stuff. Lots of canvas.”

“A tent.”

“Tent is a bit generous. “

Accommodations must be hard to come by if PB has resorted to sleeping under the ground under what sounds like a coat propped up on sticks. Unsure of what to do with the rest of the conversation, you close your eyes and wonder if you can quickly have a dream vision, like it’s a website FAQ or whatever. Life would be easier if visions worked that way, as would blaseball betting.

But it’s not meant to be. Instead your sleep is a blank stretch of time that ends when PB drops you on the ground while attempting to untangle the suitcases from himself. You land on your poor beat up face, again, and groan in the way that only someone who knows they’re going to be feeling that shit for a while can.

“Sorry!”

“Just get me some ibuprofen.”

Rubbing your eyes, you roll over and see the town of Breckenridge, adorably nestled in the mountains and cheerfully decorated with garlands. Soon it’ll be the Midsummer Festival, where artists all up and down the Rockies perform for three days straight in hopes that the winter snows won’t bury them. Charming ritual, if odd since everyone knows the snows are determined by fall equinox divination.

“What time is the game?” he asks, pressing a cold can of soda to your face. “I can fly us down there when it starts.”

“Seven. But I need some internet before then so I can write this article.”

“I’ve got internet right here! The modem is on top of the fridge.”

True to his word, the construction he ambitiously referred to as a house has a solar panel and a minifridge with a Spectrum modem on top. The rest of it is made of ski poles, waterproof tablecloths, and duct tape, but at least he has cold Pepsi. Priorities.

“Don’t you get cold?”

“The light of divine fire keeps me warm. Actually, the only issue I’ve had is when it snows and the roof caves in.”

“Spectacular.”

The internet works, at least, and you tackle the issue of tactfully memorializing a player you didn’t know while still waxing in that nostalgic haze about arena snacks and the joys of a good blaseball game. There’s a certain house style that des Gens demands, a romanticizing even when it’s against logic or good taste. During the blastardball season you were once reprimanded for using the phrase ‘crunched like cartilage in a wolf’s slobbering jaws’ to describe a serve even though the simile was both based in real experience and highly accurate.

“Why do you live so far up here?”

“Closer to the sky. Closer to things I love. People are nice, but they’re still just people. Well. I mean, I like you, but the sky is closer to home, you know?”

Home is underwater for you now, but you nod. “Home. Always going home.”

Hours later you glide into town in PB’s wings and land outside the Pocket. Down in the valley it’s much warmer, but your knit hat and gloves are a necessary precaution for going into the Pocket. Snows there are unpredictable and you don’t want to freeze to death while watching flyballs. PB doesn’t have any winter gear because he’s an angel and filled with holy fire and also doesn’t wear clothes even if you never managed to notice somehow. That’s going to live on your list of embarrassing moments for the rest of your days.

Snows are high inside the Pocket and you’re grateful when PB wraps a few wings around your shoulders. The Snow Chorus is leading people to their seats, warning of a possible avalanche in section A3, but you’re warm and shielded from the falling flakes. Out on the field the Jazz Hands are running warmup drills while the San Francisco Lovers huddle for warmth next to a salt lamp in their dugout.

“What’s the weather look like for today?” PB asks.

You flip through the press booklet that you got at the gate after showing your journalist credentials. “Snowy.”

They gave you hot chocolate, too, and you enjoy it while everyone takes opening positions. In a show of inter-team goodwill you made a bracelet of bottle caps while PB has a jingle bell on a string. You wave them enthusiastically as the Breckenridge Jazz Hand’s Band Chant starts up, yelling the words you know and humming the ones you don’t. Behind you a man is enthusiastically making noise on his bassoon while his partner rocks out on electric marimba. There’s kazoos, trumpets, hand drums, fiddles, cowbells, spoons, flutes, tambourines, electric bass, alto sax, cellos, maracas, French horns, and even a theremin. The noise is deafening. Enthused, the Jazz Hands begin to dominate the game, taking out three hitters in nine pitches.

You’re drinking your hot coca and having a good time when a name and number catches your attention in the press booklet. Malignant Divine, #4. A question mark appears in your brain. You know this player! You watched them call on an umpire!

So why doesn’t it register? They’re sitting right in the Jazz Hands’ dugout, churning and flaming. You should have recognized them, bitter like lemon rind and licking pennies.

“You see that?” you ask PB. “In the Jazz Hands’ dugout.”

“I have relatives that look like that.”

“The player guide lists them as mostly human.”

“Really?” He blinks. “Seems familiar.”

“Because we’ve had this conversation before. They were at the Coke Bottles game. And at the Moonpies one you watched them whistle up an umpire.”

“Fuck. You sure?”

“I know it happened. I just keep forgetting.”

No longer at ease, your participation in the chant becomes weak. Malignant Divine burns their memory out of everyone’s minds and you want to sink your teeth into this one and never let it go. Malignant Divine, you chant in your mind. Malignant Divine, Malignant Divine. Innings come and go. Your article on this is rendered hopeless by how little you’re paying attention. Malignant Divine, Malignant Divine.

“The weather is changing.”

Can an eclipse happen during snow? The answer is yes. What little sun was visible through the skylight is covered. The snow hushes quiet taps on drums and a single haunting flute. Instead of yelling you all whisper. _Can’t catch these hands-_

Divine is glowing in their corner of the dugout like a small sun. You hear the whistle and cringe.

“Please let the game end,” you whisper to PB. Half an inning left. “Please let the game end, please.”

Steph Weeks bats a homer and you could cry with relief.

After the game PB notices you shaking with tension and takes you out to some place where the food is all free and ladles up a bowl of tofu chicken noodle with carrots and celery. It helps a little, even if the umpire whistle is burning your mind, and you manage to relax for a few minutes while crumbling saltines into your soup.

“Teal!” PB whisper-shouts in your ear. “Teal, look, it’s Elijah Valenzuela!”

“I see, yes.”

He’s sitting at a table with Steph Weeks on the other side of the community soup deport, heads bent down together over a bowl of vegan chili. It looks like a private conversation, or at least you’ve caught that drift, and considering how almost every other person in the deport is a blaseball player you have no clue why PB has chosen Elijah to single out.

“He’s one of the most famous players in the higher spheres.”

“Higher spheres of-?”

“Angelic hagiarchy thing. Like one of the beings in my originator syzygy is manifested from the sixth sphere of unceasing devotion, while the other two are from the twelfth sphere of unconditional love. Elijah is particularly popular in the thirty first and four hundred thirty sixth spheres.”

“How many are there?”

“A couple thousand, I guess? The names get really long the further down you go. Like, the four hundred and thirty sixth is named of the unchanging glass ocean that sits before the emerald throne where worshipful emissaries offer incense.”

“I see.” You’ve never though too hard about the whole angel thing, since it gives you a headache whenever you try, but apparently it’s not just a metaphor. “Are there any spheres that really like the Moist Talkers?”

But your question remains unanswered, as PB rises and glides over to where Elijah is, outermost wings perky and inquisitive. God, he’s going to go interact. In public, of all places! You try and hide behind your bowl of corn chowder as he talks, but he gestures over at you and it’s worse than the time he volunteered you for the junior kickball team.

“Good game!” you yell across the restaurant before turning to organize the saltine packets. It’s no use, as PB comes over and drags you over to Elijah and Steph.

“Teal here has a question about the roster,” PB says, and _oh_ , so there was a game plan to all of this. Maybe having an outgoing friend isn’t so bad.

“Do you know a player called Malignant Divine? #4, plays somewhere in the outfield, on fire?”

“I don’t think so- Steph, do you remember one?”

Steph does the weird multidirectional-eyes trick that PB does when he’s trying to locate something on a different plane but can’t decide which one it’s on. “Not within a two year span of the current time, for an assumed value of current time.”

“It’s Juletember 32nd, 20X3.”

“Three years, then.”

“Then why is Malignant Divine listed in my pregame press summary?” You show the document, pointing out where underneath pitchers it lists #4 as a third-year player who previously served with the Salt Lake City Blacklungs and Toledo Bullwhips. “But that’s also wrong, because I saw Malignant Divine at a Coke Bottles and a Moonpie double-header, where a surprise incineration happened after they whistled.”

“Which we still aren’t sure about,” PB says.

“An umpire ran out in broad daylight after that whistle today. They have to be connected. Occam’s Razor.”

Elijah takes the paper. “That’s- that’s the official letterhead, yep. I know all of those other players, spelled that name right, got my address right, wow, okay. So. Mysterious player we don’t know might be an emissary of the umpires. Seems against the rules. But, the Commissioner doesn’t take suggestions, so we’re at square one again.”

“Vigilante justice,” Steph suggests. “Clothesline them.”

“They’re on fire.”

Returning to the Jazz Hand’s press release, you flip forwards in the schedule and find a godsend, a coincidence of timing that might solve your problems, or at least get you in touch with an expert.

“You play the Firefighters tomorrow.”

PB lights up. “And who better to ask about a fire-“

“-then people who fight one, yeah.”

“But how do you know Malignant Divine will be at that game? From what you’ve said their appearance sounds totally random.”

“Not totally random. Only during an eclipse. Weather reports for tomorrow are predicting it.”

Standing at the table, you suddenly become aware that you’re the last ones in the restaurant. Everyone else has filed outside and are discussing rides to the station or the early start the next day. There’s going to be a rare red-eye night and then a midmorning game, so their suitcases are already packed.

“We’ve got to get to Chicago,” you tell PB. “Valenzuela, Weeks, can you get the word out? Let the Firefighters know?”

“I’ll try. If Malignant Divine has a memory effect like you said, though, it might be difficult.”

He offers your hand, and you shake it with a firm pump before leaving. You understand how a man like that could run a revolution-he inspires a certain confidence. He seems to reassure you that it will be overcome. And for that you can only hope.

“We can’t leave right now,” PB says once you make it back to his tent. “I’m so sorry, but I’m exhausted. Five hours of sleep. Four. That’s all I need.”

The game the next day starts at 11. It’s midnight now, so you might be cutting it close, but you don’t need your ride collapsing mid-flight. You stroke his side and nod. “Five hours. Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

The empty night is silent over the town of Breckenridge. All you hear is cicadas.

The flight to Chicago PB lets you dream, if only because of the urgency. Malignant Divine burns in your mind and only your mind, as not even blaseball-reference keeps their stats. You can only hope that Elijah managed to warn them and that their hose system is clear because otherwise there’s nothing that can be done.

Touching down in front of the Firehouse, you run for the last ticket and unashamedly show your press pass to try and bribe your way in. The ticket master shrugs and points towards the SOLD OUT sign.

“It’s vital,” you plead. “There might be a fire.”

They point towards the ‘Firefighters’ portion of the booth sign. You wring your hands a bit more before giving up and walking out to the CTA hub, motioning for PB to be silent.

“We’re going to break in,” you whisper. “If they see Malignant Divine then they’ll have to agree with us. They’re fire experts for a reason.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Have you really never broken the law before? Lie your ass off. Claim you were looking for the bathroom. And never, ever, act like you think you’re guilty.”

PB looks as bashful as an angel can look. If you got to pick your partner for a break-in you wouldn’t have selected a creature who is bound by laws both human and heavenly but wishes are for horses. There’s a maintenance entrance on the backside of the Firehouse that you can already spot, and a convenient trashcan around the corner from it just begging to be used for crimes.

“I’ve got a plan. Can you light something on fire for me?”

“I can try, I guess. It’s not really my specialty, you know?”

“Try lighting that trash can over there on fire and then duck behind the dumpster. We’ll wait until a firefighter comes out, then dash inside and pretend to be house staff.”

It’s foolproof. You’ve broken into many a location by looking busy and carrying some sort of cleaning implement. PB is doing his nervous flap routine, but you ignore all that. Angels set things on fire by accident all the time; if they come down on anyone’s head it’ll be yours for being a member of the press. Treading lightly, you crawl underneath the dumpster and wait for him to complete the crime. He’s very slow about it, pretending to be observing in detail the leftover wreck of a train car before just-so-happening to turn a few of his brighter eyes on the pile of flammable litter and making it absolutely explode.

“Overcooked it a little!” he yelps when he makes it over to where you are.

It takes a few minutes for the smoke to be noticed, but as soon as a member of the janitorial staff comes running outside with an extinguisher you dart in the open door, pulling PB along even though he’s too tall to really fit. Once inside you take a left, since there’s people talking to the right, and run until you’re somewhere where you can smell peanuts and hear the crowd roar.

“Easy!”

“I didn’t know I could do that with my powers.”

You ignore him and step out into the stadium, squinting since the sun is so bright. There’s no seat for you to take, but a couple people always stand at the balcony between tiers and you join them, nodding like you’ve been there all along. One hands you a beer and you take it, fist bumping in return like your blood is from Chicago.

Out in the dugout sits Malignant Divine, as expected. They’re now as wide as they are tall in flames, sitting off to the side away from several uncomfortable-looking batters and a sweaty pitcher. You’re wondering how they don’t notice. Maybe they’re just too used to the flame. The weather on the scoreboard says it’s supposed to be clear all day, but you know from the dream visions that there will be a solar eclipse, possibly in the sixth inning, definitely by the seventh. You watch Kennedy strike out a batter and sip the beer. Corona with a lime, not bad.

“It’s getting hotter,” PB whispers. “And Divine is too bright.”

“How bright?”

“Like staring at the heart of the sun, from some eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Offering him a sip of beer, you close your eyes and try one of the wilderness school’s sensing and visualizing tricks the psychometric clade always used to practice. Your powers are honestly too dull to sense regular people, but if Divine is connected to the umpires then you’ll have no problem tasting such rage. And you don’t. It’s bitter as the rind of lemons gone off, salty as the inside of a conch, smells like rancid butter. Nasty stuff. You pull back into yourself and watch the sky for a bit. A few birds, nothing more.

It’s so normal that when danger does strike you almost miss it. A low clear whistle out from the east, and then the slow inevitability of the sun being blocked by the moon. The crowd shifts in their seats, used to the danger inherent in blaseball and fiery fates but still uncertain. There hasn’t been an incineration since season two. Rumor has it that the Firefighters are fireproof.

“They’re getting brighter, God, I can’t look at it-“

“Then don’t. It’ll burn your eyes out, and I need you whole for this next part.”

“You have a plan?”

You have a challenge in mind. A direct call to action. The Firefighters and the Jazz Hands are continuing to play as if nothing is happening, but you can tell by the way that Elijah lowers his head and Steph grips his bat that they’ve also caught on to what’s happening.

No time like now. They’re switching offense and defense for the middle of the inning and you know what you have to do. You run down the stairs, bend like a spring, and leap over the fences into the field.

“Malignant Divine!” you scream. “I change you with aiding an umpire conspiracy!”

The field is silent while everyone absorbs what was said. Players stop where they were in transition, eyes cutting between you and Divine, who has yet to move from their position in the corner of the Firefighter’s dugout. The moon continues to cover the sun, and a howling is heard in the distance. Smoke gets in your eyes.

When the sky bursts into flame it’s almost a relief.

Three things happen in succession:

  1. When the flames hit, the Firehouse alarm begins to sound, and the Firefighters all drop their equipment where they’re standing to man their stations.
  2. The Jazz Hands hop into the stands and begin escorting fans out, calling for orderly lines and a calm friendly spirit. Their clapping and peppy ‘evacuate before you become a piece of charcoal’ song would go on to become a #1 hit on Chicago college radio.
  3. You realize that your plan ended right about here.



Malignant Divine is aided by the sun, which sends hot tongues of flame down, wrapping them in a fiery core of heat that melts the ground around them into glass. Ducking behind the visitor’s dugout, you grab one of the Minty Fresh Cold Cocktails (a fire extinguisher in grenade form) and put one thumb on the fuse. There was a test like this in wilderness school, where one of the water bears who’d grown to magnificent size stalked you for three sleepless days until you killed it with a hunting knife and took your bloody prize. An emissary of the umpires will be much harder.

“You feeling lucky?” Elijah says next to your head.

“No.”

“Good idea. Lucky people get cocky.”

He presses a hand to the ground and peers around the edge of the dugout, making signals at someone over in the stands. The fire is making sweat drip off the tip of your nose and trickle down your back, waves of heat pulsing through the air and turning the chain-link fence you’re leaned against scalding. There’s only going to be one chance to take Divine down and you’re not sure if you can make it. You look for PB but can’t find him. An umpire growls somewhere behind you.

“If an umpire attacks-“you begin.

“You’re fucked.”

“Figures.”

You wish you had your hunting knife on you as a precaution, but border security wouldn’t have looked kindly on people who tried to take in weapons. And the Minty Fresh Cold Cocktails can only stun the beast. The best option is evasive measures. Checking above and behind you, you army crawl underneath an abandoned peanut seller sandwich board and gaze out towards the action. Three Firefighters are running up the awning on the southern side of the field with industrial hoses and fire axes while a fourth figure covers the last few spectators exiting the stands. Divine hasn’t moved, only grown in width. PB is nowhere to be seen.

“Kid!” someone hisses behind you. You look up and see Lou Roseheart holding a fireproof jacket and sunglasses. She’s got her own pair of shades, sunset colored with little rhinestone cats on the corners. “Take these. When that emissary goes nuclear, it’s gonna blow.”

Being an ash smudge in the seats of the Firehouse for the rest of eternity sounds like a drag, so you pop the jacket and glasses on before gazing back at the field. There’s no real weak spot on the new addition to the left outfield, just a swirling mass in which occasional faces can be seen. Umpires eat souls, don’t they? It’s as if the rumors about the Hellmouth have all come true in one horror.

“We’re going to give that thing a good hosing,” Lou says. “Before it burns off the snack shack mural. We had that commissioned specially for the championships.”

Elijah sighs. “Water isn’t good enough to beat something like this. You need raw power.”

“The raw power of 250 gallons per minute isn’t enough?”

“Psychic power. In the literature they mention using an emissary to defeat an emissary, but there’s no way to get one of those on short order. You got any wizards on the team?”

“We’ve got a pool boy.”

“Well shit.”

Emissary, you think. Yet again your head is buzzing with some half-remembered knowledge and it’s driving you crazy. Only an emissary can beat another emissary.

“PB!” you say as loud as you dare. “PB!”

“Hush, kid, you’ll make it look over here.”

“My friend is an angel, and they’re emissaries of God, right? So maybe if he does some angel shit, or something, it can defeat Malignant Divine?”

Elijah waves his hand side to side. “Sort of? Depends on the sphere, astrology, if he’s hungry enough…”

“Is somewhere between fourth and sixth enough?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.”

“Feathery bastard better come quick,” Lou says, pulling the hood of her jacket over her head. “Thing’s starting to pulse.”

“Maybe we need to soften it up first?”

Using the phrase soften up to describe a massive flaming ball of hatred that now reeks of rotten flesh set aflame and plastic held over a lighter seems inadequate. But you can’t imagine being PB, circling somewhere above and watching this thing slowly consume the field. You hope he’s alright. You really do.

“They’re going to start running the water in two minutes once the pressure builds up. According to the flaming column protocol- which is all theoretical, mind you, we never thought we’d have to use it- but according to protocol you’re supposed to start trying to cool the blaze down thirty second before, so the water doesn’t become steam.”

Currently you feel like a steaming puddle of microwaved butter, so anything involving cooling down sounds wonderful. You join Lou and Elijah in picking up more Minty Fresh Cold Cocktails and keep watch of the scoreboard, which has flipped to a clock counting down. If Malignant Divine has noticed, they aren’t reacting. A swirl of grey clouds has begun to form around the edges of the still-eclipsed sun.

Visibility lowers as the clouds descend onto the Firehouse, revealing themselves to be pure smoke. It’s getting hard to breathe. Only the glow of the timer cuts through the fog. 1:09. You cough and pull your t-shirt over your mouth, trying to filter the air.

“Fifteen seconds,” you whisper. The minty freshness is making your hand cold. “Twelve seconds.”

Thunder cracks overhead and you jerk up. There’s a bolt across the sky. PB?

“FIRE!” someone yells in the stands and you start chucking cocktails. They explode into masses of toothpaste like foam, cold and cloying, getting fumes in your eyes and making them sting. An umpire roars in pain and you try and aim in its direction, but there’s too much noise and then the hoses kick in and you curl into a little ball and try and protect your vital organs.

“Fuck, there’s an umpire,” Elijah says.

You crack one eye open and see the lurching outline of one. A throwing ax is stuck in the side of its head, and black oil blood runs down in flaming globs. It sniffs and growls in your direction, so you pray and try to appear as fireproof as possible.

There’s a spot on its neck where the helmet separates from the chest guard. A soft section of flesh where the veins would be close to the surface. On animals that’s where you aim for to kill it quick.

There’s a long piece of shrapnel next to you, pointed enough to draw blood.

Sometimes you make decisions in the heat of the moment.

Killing an umpire feels like killing anything else; it’s angry for a few seconds and then it’s limp, although you take a solid hit to the face and come away bloody. You don’t know if your nose will ever set right again. The axe is still in its head and you take it, backing away and turning in a circle.

“What the fuck!” Lou yells. “You can kill them?”

Your mind has hit full hunter mode and you don’t notice her, or the thunder overhead, or how the heat is making the metal snaps of your shirt burn. Wilderness school graduation transformed you like this, a fusion of a human and a people-eater. And umpires are still people. Stalking through the masses of foam and ash you look for new prey, all while keeping an eye on Malignant Divine. If you could you’d make them bleed. But you don’t know if there’s any blood left in their body.

Thunder claps again and you look overhead. The moon is headed to the left of the sun. Something is glowing- not the sun, something is glowing over the parking lot, and it has many eyes and many wings. PB! yells the lizard brain.

“Join me in the hunt!” you yell. You know he won’t be able to hear you over the roar of fire and hoses and screaming umpires. He turns anyways.

Racing like a jet engine, whirling wheels in wheels, PB aims right for the heart of Malignant Divine. For there’s something breakable at the core that’s too hot to touch- the heart of an umpire, you think in your blood dazed state, but PB can burn hotter than that.

And when he pierces through it goes nuclear and you fall flat on your back, overwhelmed and lit up and stunned. Malignant Divine screams. Water turns to steam where it’s hitting the battle fusion of an umpire’s god and an angel’s god, mixing with the smoke and turning your lungs to cotton. Everything goes very quiet, and very clear. PB makes eye contact with you. You wink back, and then burn.

At some point you sit up, cracking through the layer of minty foam and blasted earth covering your body. The sun is coming back overhead, shining down on the remains of umpires cased in cloudy glass. Swamuel and Thomas help one another push the chain link fence around the field upright while Wesley blows his whistle as if accusing small pool-going children of roughhousing in the shallow end.

PB is there, and you stand and hug him. He smells like baked grass and singed chicken.

“Your wing is still on fire,” you say, and pinch it out. “And I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Angels are fireproof,” PB says, although a burned section of his wing is down to the skin and blistering. “The wings are just a shell around the core, you know? And like, that core is like the core in umpire emissaries, but stronger. Like a plastic spoon in boiling water.”

“Whatever it was, it was very beautiful.”

He folds his wings over you as the sky opens up and a sudden sun shower washes all the smoke away.

Afterwards in the medical tent, while you get your eyebrow stitched back up and PB has his wing tended to, Lou comes over with a loaf of zucchini bread and asks how you’re doing.

“As fine as can be expected,” you say. Half your face is numb, so it doesn’t come out right. “Sorry about the fire.”

“It’s alright. Chicagoans take care of one another.”

She whispers something in one of PB’s mouths that you can’t hear and then departs, adding warm bursting tomatoes and cucumbers. You bite into one, enjoying the crunch, while feeding PB a chunk of bread.

“This is going to make a great article.”

“Mmmhmm. You’re going back soon?”

“My visa’s going to be up.”

“Yeah.”

The cucumber tastes a lot more bitter now, dripping wetness down your wrist and dripping off your elbow. “You’re gonna miss me.”

“I’ve missed you for a while.”

Me too, you think. But you don’t say it, because that’s not something you’d ever be easily able to say.

“I’ll come and visit,” you say instead. “Now that I know you’re alive. And you can come over the border and visit your aunt. I can take you rowing over Rouyn-Noranda.”

“I’ll be there in the winter when the season ends.”

Maybe it’d still be odd to see PB hovering over the waters of the school grounds where you’d hid as children. Now in the winters none of the water froze over, so there’d be no pond hlockey games, and the motion of the ocean meant family dinners on the houseboat couldn’t be held with the nice dishes. There were no more aspens on the shore of Osisko Lake, and even the mines where you ventured one summer and got lost without a lantern were now filled.

“Make new memories of the town,” you say, “even though the Christmas service is still the same and we eat the same ducks we did before.”

“Is it that different? Aside from the water, of course.”

“It still snows in the winter.”

PB nods and drapes a wing over your shoulder. “Then I think that’s good enough.”


End file.
